The late Irish writer Nuala O Faolain often fought with her partner's eight-year-old daughter for his affection a new Irish television documentary reveals.

In it, New York lawyer John Low-Beer's now teenage daughter, Anna, gives her account for the first time of how O Faolain tried to cut her off from her father.

It will air on Irish television this week

"It was a new thing for me, for a girlfriend of my father's to be jealous of me. I was eight years old," Anna said

"She would complain to him about how he spent too much time with me and I would complain to him about how he spent too much time with her.

"But we never really complained to each other . . . It went over our heads because, actually, when we were alone together we had a really good relationship."

"She never really blamed me. She always blamed herself. She knew she had some problems with attention that she didn't get when she was a child, I guess. And she carried those issues throughout her life," said Anna.

Her father told the program "She just easily felt that she was second. She would say that. And I would say well Anna's just a child. She would say 'well I'm just a child too.' I often felt very torn between Anna and Nuala," Low-Beer admits.

O Faolain had moved to New York after her hugely successful autobiography "Are You Somebody" had been published and she had ended her relationship with Irish journalist Nell McCafferty.